Books I love, that I'm slogging through,
or that I'm about to slog through

I read a lot. Go
figure.

I know people who do not
ever read books for pleasure, including otherwise highly intelligent
people I know. I do not understand this. Were y'all that traumatized
by your required reading in high school and college?

Anyway ... enough
ranting.

As with most other things in
my life these days, my reading time suffers, what with all the things I
have to do, and the too-much time I seem to spend online. Nevertheless,
I've managed to read these titles recently, and I'll keep updating
throughout 2001 if I can remember. That last batch down there was from
May of 1999. And yes, I did read in the year 2000, I just forgot about
this page and didn't update it. Hey man, this site is almost 1,100 pages
and it's a one (absentminded) man show!

2001 entries

The Grapes of
Wrath, by John Steinbeck.

A month or so ago I
finally saw the film of this book, and to paraphrase Woody Guthrie, it was
just about "the best cussed pitcher I'd ever seen". I'm not sure how I
managed to get through high school, college and gradual school without
having read this (maybe I'll make scapegoats out of my junior and senior
year honors English teachers, while fully realizing that all I had to do
was just buy the book and read it). I've just started it. It's
relentless, but marvelous.

Fast Food Nation:
The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, by Eric Schlosser

Pot on the Fire:
Further Exploits of a Renegade Cook, by John Thorne with Matt Lewis
Thorne

It's not a cookbook,
although there are oodles of recipes in it. It's an example of food
writing at its finest, from two people who truly love food and love to
share what they know. (In fact, they've been publishing the
"Simple Cooking" newsletter for
years.) Worth the cover price simply for the chapter on banh mi
("Vietnamese po-boys"), but there's much much more.

SF meets theology in
this slightly flawed but enjoyable and fascinating novel about a visit by
aliens who tell the first paleontologist they meet that they have
scientific proof of the existence of God; i.e., that the universe was
deliberately and intelligently designed. It's not plot-driven -- most of
the novel consists of conversations between Canadian paleontologist Tom
Jericho and an eight-limbed, spiderlike alien named Hollus -- plus the
humor could get a bit hokey and silly, as much as I enjoyed it. All in
all, though, once you get past Sawyer's conjectures as to how the aliens
come to believe what they do, it's completely engrossing. One
of the themes I found most interesting was the aliens' proof of
the existence of God having come from their science and
mathematics, not religion. They're firm and ardent believers in
God, but do not worship him as humans do. Recommended.

Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's StoneHarry Potter and the Chamber of SecretsHarry Potter and the Prisoner of AzkabanHarry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, by J. K. Rowling

Whizzed through these starting right before Christmas (okay,
cheating, but I gave the first 2 paperbacks to Wes and got all the
hardbacks in '01). It ain't exactly great literature, but they're
wonderful stories, funny and scary and thoroughly enjoyable.

The Hole in the
Flag, by Andrei Codrescu

The Romanian-American
poet and NPR commentator returns to Romania for the first time since he
left it at age 19, mere days after the Romanian revolution overthrew and
executed the hated dictator Ceauçescu. Riveting.

Me Talk Pretty One
Day, by David Sedaris

David moves to Paris
with his boyfriend Hugh, and unleashes himself upon the French. Priceless
and hilarious.

Papal Sins, by
Garry Wills

1999 entries

Hannibal, by Thomas Harris

Brrrrrrr. Cracking, terrific sequel to
Silence of the Lambs, full of references to Renaissance Italy and the culinary arts,
and creepy as hell. I plowed through this one in two days.

Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier

A powerful, often stunning novel of a man's journey home in western North Carolina
during the waning months of the Civil War.

The Page Turner, by David Leavitt

It has its moments, but after Arkansas,
this was a disappointment.

Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions, by Neil Gaiman

Wonderful short stories and poems, by the author of
one of my favorite novels.

Zydeco!, by Ben Sandmel and Rick Olivier

A beautifully photographe and insightfully written study of one of my very favorite kinds
of music, the dance music of the black Creole communities of southwest Louisiana.

Hidden Truths: Bloody Sunday 1972

Essays and photograph on the British Army massacre of unarmed civilians in Derry in the
north of Ireland.

The Wasp Factory, by Iain Banks

A fascinating, witty, scary and ultimately shocking novel about a disturbed
young man living with his strange father on a small Scottish island.

Old favorites

I tried to think of a list of my
favorite books of all time, and reached a big wall. How could I just pick a few?
Which ones would I pick? Why the frack can't I think of any right now? Well, some
of the ones that popped quickly into mind, probably not in any order of what they
meant to me, are:

A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole

Perhaps my favorite novel. A hilarious farce about the characters of and the life
in New Orleans. You'll never forget Ignatius J. Reilly.

Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury

This novel of wonder and darkness still creeps me out.

Almost anything by Harlan Ellison

He can make me laugh, cry, shudder, cower under the covers, or piss me off like almost no other.

Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Or almost anything else; I'm a big Vonnegut fan.

The Alteration, by Kingsley Amis

An alternate-history novel set in England in 1975, in a world where the Protestant Reformation
never took place. It's one of those "wow" novels.

The Man Who Folded Himself, by David Gerrold

A time-travel (and time-travel paradox) novel, best described by my old friend Matt Brown as
"a mindfuck".